That's right, I said "commie." The word usually elicits one of two reactions:

Mainstream average Americans -- who have been duped into thinking that communism is a relic of the past which disappeared with the fall of the Soviet Union -- feel that anyone still battling against imaginary Cold War enemies must be some sort of Dr. Strangelove-esque kook who worries about Precious Bodily Fluids and builds fallout shelters in the basement; OR...

Communists themselves -- who thought it was safe to emerge from the shadows now that the world's attention was drawn elsewhere after the fall of the Berlin Wall -- react to the word with revulsion and fury, accusing anyone who says it of being a fascist McCarthyite intent on persecuting innocent Americans with hysterical witch hunts.

There's one little detail, however, that tends to get overlooked: The communists are still here, and they're just as dangerous as they ever were, and have not relinquished their goal of overthrowing the United States and bringing an end to the capitalist system. And the reason I'm aware of this fact perhaps more than the typical person is that I often attend anti-war rallies, which is where communists really come out of the woodwork. In fact, not only are many of the people at these rallies up-front communists, but the rally organizers -- groups like ANSWER and World Can't Wait -- are themselves communist organizations. I'd even go so far as to venture that the entire anti-war protest movement has been completely taken over by communists.

Not pseudo-communists. Not people whom I'm insulting by casting an outdated epithet at them. Not people who in all innocence have some overlap with communist philosophy. Not mere left-wingers. Communists. And I'm tired of being afraid to lay it on the line and call it as I see it. I know history very well, and communism is a failed ideology that has only brought misery and oppression wherever it has triumphed. There. I've said it.

So, since when is it forbidden to mock one's ideological opponents? If the Rethuglicans can poke fun at the Demoncrats and vice-versa, why can't I taunt the communists by calling them by their least favorite word, commies? Who exactly could I be offending here -- except for the communists themselves? And if they're imaginary, then I'm not offending anyone, right?

Problem is, they're not imaginary. Let's take a little stroll through the protest and see who's there...

"Who are you calling a commie?" You. I am calling you a commie.

Wait wait wait, she's just a socialist, can't you see? All she wants is a socialist revolution. And socialism is kind of cute and fuzzy and sexy and half-baked -- isn't it?

No. In the modern world, "socialist" is actually just a euphemism for "communist." Look at her other sign. She's actually in favor of the Communist Chinese oppression and colonization of Tibet. Not so cute and fuzzy now, is it?

Think again, my friend. The promulgation of Che Guevara to the mainstream is a conscious attempt to bring about mass acceptance of one of the 20th century's most militant communists.

Nearly every booth and table at this (and every other) anti-war rally was set up by some kind of communist group -- in this case, the Bolsheviks. (Yes, Virginia, there still are Bolsheviks.)

"San Francisco Revolution Youth" is another communist group designed specially to attract teenagers and college students.

The FMLN was originally a violent communist guerrilla army that nearly seized control of El Salvador by force; recently their political aspirations have become murkier after they consented to a power-sharing agreement and tried to become a normal non-military communist political party, rather than just an underground revolutionary army. Either way: they're straight-up communists.

The IWW -- better known as the Wobblies -- were originally a rather eccentric but still powerful "workers' union" that sought the overthrow of capitalism. They faded from relevance with the end of the industrial manufacturing era in the United States, but they've recently been revived, and are again starting their attempts to bring about a communist system through the backdoor route of worker unionization. Good luck with that.

At every one of these San Francisco anti-war protests, a very large and very organized communist Filipino contingent makes its presence felt, though they always seem to be somewhat standoffish toward the other communist groups.

A spokeswoman for the rally's organizers, ANSWER, speaks to the media behind the main stage. ANSWER is a front group for two communist organizations, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the Workers World Party, both of which are some self-defined shade of "Marxist." Don't believe me? Google it or wikipedia it yourself.

The front of the march, at which ANSWER always positions young women, a standard recruiting technique.

This video compilation shows ANSWER organizers leading the crowd in a seemingly nonstop chant of "U.S. is a terrorist state!" which continued on and off for most of the afternoon -- reaching (as can be heard here) levels of hysteria at times. There is absolutely no question these people want to overthrow the American government "by any means necessary" (to use their own phrase).

And of course our little overview wouldn't be complete without World Can't Wait, which (as I describe in the "Berkeley Rethinks Mao" section of this report) are unrepentant Maoists.

World Can't Wait's main weapon is their orange jumpsuits, which always draw photographers and make them seem more like a performance art troupe than a dangerous revolutionary cell, which is what they really are.

For more photographic proof of the overarching communist control of these rallies, you can take a quick glance at manyof mypreviousreports, though be forewarned that it gets pretty repetitive and spiritually numbing after a while -- just from looking at the pictures. Imagine what things would be like if these people were actually in charge of society.

Now, to be frank, I don't think that these up-front kind of communist groups have any real chance of success at actually overthrowing the American system by force. They're almost buffoonish in their obviousness. But who I really do worry about are the "stealth communists," who introduce Marxist thought and collectivist philosophy into academia and mainstream entertainment without announcing what they're doing. These much more clever communist ideologues follow (knowingly or not) the writings of Antonio Gramsci, the Italian communist theorist who proposed infiltrating the schools and the media so as to subtly indoctrinate generations of youngsters, eventually paving the way for a "soft revolution" once a tipping point is reached in society. Already, Marxist thought patterns have become so standard in American mainstream cultural discourse that most people don't even know they're mimicking communist slogans.